Caterbuildar

A white paper by Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle called 'Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years on' explains the next phase of the Web age. This paper goes into detail and gives very good examples. However, here is a very brief summary in my words and what I understand — after reading this paper — about ‘Web Squared’.

#1) Firstly, Web 2.0: we have heard this term for some years now, is not a version of the Web, it is basically (following the dotcom bust) the “second coming” of the Web. The Web is no longer about static pages giving information but it has become a rich experience. One can interact and participate e.g. leaving comments on blogs or articles; everyone can join in and show something they want for their personal or business needs e.g. pictures, videos on platforms such Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and far more.

#2) In 2010, we will see just what the Web means to this world (well, we see this now but the next phase has far more impact). 2010 is a very important year for the Web because it is the year they say will the “explosion” of the Web.

#3) Web 3.0 or Web Squared is among many other things: semantic, sentient, social, mobile and some form of virtual reality.

#4) The Web will be everywhere. Information about everything in this world goes on the Web. It is real-time and constant. The information is provided by us all (you and me), private use or businesses, organisations etc. We feed the Web either through our computers, or mobiles or by any other means which connects us to the Web. The Web will be in all things such as it is on our mobile now and it will be connected machines one day. We create the Web and it grows and improves through its use and a constant feedback system. It grows constantly and intelligently because we all feed it by interacting and providing constant information.

#5) Applications (and hardware to compliment the applications) become more and more sophisticated which are driven not only by humans but also by sensors (e.g. Google Mobile App for the iPhone is a current example).

#6) The Web becomes the world. We all and all things in this real world, cast an "information shadow" on the Web. This means that there is, or, inevitably will be some sort of data on the Web which relates to us or something in this world. Most of these information shadows will have a real links in this world. The handling of data and and linking system in the Web will become far more advanced and refined.

#7) The coming Web will also create what they call 'Internet of Things' – here for example, products won't need unique machine-readable ID any more, instead, for example, you can just take a photo of a label of a bottle of jam in your supermarket and your mobile phone, image recognition, search and the sentient web sorts out the rest.

#8) An elementary competency of Web Squared will be the, “mapping from unstructured data to structured data sets”.

So, I would like to give you some very important terms which were used in this paper which I think are worth remembering and understanding:

• Collective intelligence
• Information Shadow
• Internet of Things
• Real-time

I hope you found the blog easy to understand and useful. Please comment on my summary!